Wednesday, April 30, 2014

PHOTO: "Marcello Mastroianni On The Set Of La Dolce Vita" / POEM: "Anyone Knows Any Better"

Anyone Knows Any Better

A deep thinkerexhales the smoke from an unfiltered cigarette

I ask for their numbersthe women laugh at methey whisper I walk awayescapades and epiloguesshe lives there in a cloudme ne frega un cazzoenter the marketplacesecrets from her secretsan itch that picks the heartmy dear friend Steinertakes his children’s lifesays bye-bye paparazzithe house was bombedlike the way we ran awayand the debts we never repaid.

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"Sometimes at night the darkness and silence weighs upon me. Peace frightens me; perhaps I fear it most of all. I feel it is only a façade hiding the face of hell. I think, `What is in store for my children tomorrow?' `The world will be wonderful,' they say. But from whose viewpoint? If one phone call could announce the end of everything? We need to live in a state of suspended animation like a work of art, in a state of enchantment. We have to succeed in loving so greatly that we live outside of time, detached."

Steiner is usually described as a weak intellectual, someone afraid of his convictions. Realistically of course, he is, as Fellini puts it, the very worst villain. I would however place him with Camus' anti-heroes, those who have far too much faith in their convictions, whose moral universe is without hope, whose despair over the human condition impels them towards nihilism -- and where the detachment leads not to love but to murder and suicide.

Born in New York, he lived in many countries until Australia finally took him in. He is currently a Foreign Expert EFL teacher in China. There were some extreme sports once; now he plays (mostly) respectable chess and pool. He listens to the Grateful Dead. He claims he can read Shakespeare in the original. Some days he thinks there is nothing easy about the Tao.